A Texas jury on Monday found John Eagle Collision Center’s incorrect repair liable for much of the severity of the crash of a 2010 Honda Fit, and awarded the couple injured and trapped inside the burning vehicle $42 million in damages.

“I didn’t think that they were going to award the plaintiffs with that much money,” said Auto Body Association of Texas Executive Director Jill Tuggle, who watched closing arguments Friday and was present for the verdict Monday. “I thought that the defense made a pretty good case for planting some seed of doubt.”

The verdict was 10-2, an acceptable split under Texas law so long as the same 10 jurors agree on every part of the verdict and damages.

As various multimillion-dollar awards for separate injuries were read, “jaws were just dropping” on the plaintiff’s side of the court, Tuggle said. She called it “pretty intense.”

Interviewed after the trial, the two dissenting jurors said they thought John Eagle should have shouldered 99 percent of the responsibility, and “they wanted to offer more money,” Todd Tracy, who represented plaintiffs Matthew and Marcia Seebachan, said Monday afternoon.

“I think it was vindication for them,” Tracy said of his clients’ reaction to the verdict. He said they had always wondered why their Fit’s roof behaved as it had in the collision.

Tracy said talks were underway regarding a potential settlement (which might be more desirable to the plaintiffs than what could be a long and expensive appeals process).

“I anticipate a resolution of this thing favorably,” Tracy said, describing the possibility of John Eagle Collision and his firm working together on crash testing.

Contacted for comment about the verdict, an attorney for John Eagle Collision on Monday said a joint press release with Tracy’s Tracy Law Firm would be coming Tuesday.

The Seebachans had asked for $42 million, and the jury awarded all but about $34,000 of it. (Tracy wasn’t sure what $34,000 specifically was rejected.) The body shop had proposed $3.5 million instead.

“They gave us every dollar we asked for,” Tracy said.

The Tundra’s driver was not actually named as a defendant in this lawsuit. Tracy said “he paid his proceeds a long time ago.”

Crash and repair

The Seebachans were traveling in the Fit on a 75 mph stretch of road in 2013 when a 2010 Toyota Tundra in the other lane hydroplaned into their path, leading to the Fit striking the right front quarter of the Tundra in a T-bone collision.

Two of the Tundra’s occupants were uninjured, while the other was merely bruised. The Seebachans were seriously injured and trapped inside the burning Fit, which they had purchased without knowledge of the previous repair.

Honda OEM repair procedures demand a shop tack-weld the front and rear corner edges of the new roof and then perform a combination of two- and three-plate spot welds and MIG plug welds. (Editor’s note: All highlighting in hyperlinked documents done by Tracy Law Firm.)

“The Seebachan’s would likely have had only minor injuries if not for the faulty repair,” Hannemann wrote. “One must remember that a vehicle’s safety systems are like links in a chain. Each system must work together to ensure the other safety systems perform as designed. When the faulty structural repairs were made, the crashworthiness systems were all compromised.”

“The 2010 Honda Fit was originally designed to provide structural and fuel system crashworthiness protection, which would prevent serious injuries to occupants in this foreseeable accident,” wrote Hannemann, an engineer who has worked on the Ford GT and Mercedes SLR.“In fact, the 2010 Honda Fit receives the highest rating from the IIHS for the moderate offset impact test, which is virtually identical in terms of crash forces to the subject accident.”

And if a shop doesn’t get certified by I-CAR, “we get them for just general incompetence,” Tracy predicted.

“They can’t win for losing,” he said.

Tuggle, who was present when the plaintiffs interviewed the jury in the hallway after the trial, said jurors felt an OEM “recommended procedure” still meant the the shop must fix the vehicle that way or “they assume full liability.”

“It’s interesting that there’s so much interpretation” in the collision repair field, Tuggle said, but “in the eyes of a consumer,” OEM recommendations are indeed requirements.

“We’ve got to take the word recommendation more seriously,” Tuggle said.

Meeting the jurors, plaintiffs

Tuggle said the jury was interested in justice for the Seebachans, not with trying to fix the collision repair industry. But she said she introduced herself, said repairers were watching the case closely, and “‘this will have a big impact on our industry.'”

“They thanked me,” Tuggle said. She said she got the impression her comments helped them feel like “‘I did the right thing'” with the verdict.

Tuggle called the case a tricky one for her as a trade group director. She hates to see a shop sued, but repairers seemed “mostly positive with the verdict today,” she said.

Shops can cite Seebachan v. John Eagle Collision to an insurer refusing to pay for the work to be done correctly and say, “‘If I don’t, this could happen to me,'” she said.

She said she told Seebachan “our industry has used this for a learning experience” and “everyone’s listening now.” He and Marcia Seebachan both thanked her.

Images:

Matthew and Marcia Seebachan were seriously injured after their 2010 Honda Fit collided with a hydroplaning 2010 Toyota Tundra. (Provided by Tracy Law Firm via PRNewsFoto)

This graphic from the Tracy Law Firm compares where the original welds on a Honda Fit would be compared to the alleged absent welds on the Seebachans’ 2010 Fit. (Provided by Tracy Law Firm)

Ford GT engineer and plaintiff consultant Neil Hannemann wrote that in his expert opinion, the failure of the roof of the Seebachans’ 2010 Honda Fit during a crash compromised the overall structure and collision energy management of the vehicle — contributing to the Seebachans being trapped inside and the subsequent fire. (Neil Hannemann report; provided by Tracy Law Firm)

This 2010 Honda Fit burned following a collision with a hydroplaning 2010 Toyota Tundra. (Provided by Tracy Law Firm via PRNewsFoto)